that was in another country
by the red feather
Summary: Four times and places the Winchesters were hunters of one sort or another. AU drabbley bits, crossovers with Firefly and Harry Potter included.


_**1939. San Francisco, California – the one where they're private eyes**_

The place that you've been looking for is on the second floor of an office building that has seen better days, a door at the end of a smoky, ill-lit hallway where half the lights are out and the only sounds are the _clack, clack clack_ of typewriters working behind thin walls. Worn but neat black painted letters on the pane of glass in the last door on the left read _THE WINCHESTER AGENCY_, and for a minute you're frozen, fingers fiddling with the hem of your skirt, not sure if you should knock or just walk in.

Your indecision doesn't last long, because a few seconds later a shape moves behind the pane of glass and the door opens. The man behind the door is tall and broad, his green eyes looking down at you through shaggy brown hair as he smiles and asks you to please, come in. You follow him in, taking stock of the office, which is mostly bare except for bookshelves filled with strange, foreign-looking volumes and one desk with two chairs in front and one chair behind. Another man is sitting behind the desk, smoking a cigarette in his shirtsleeves, and he brightens up when you walk in the room.

The taller of the two men, the one who greeted you at the door, settles himself in one of the other chairs and clasps his hands together, sends a look you don't understand at the other man and asks gently, "So what can my brother and I do for you, miss?"

They look like characters from the last picture you saw at the movie house, Hollywood handsome and suave, and you feel utterly silly as you blurt out, all at once, "I...I think there's a ghost in my house, and someone told me that you – that you might be able to help."

The man behind the desk takes a long drag on his cigarette, then grinds what's left into the ashtray on the desk and stands up, grabs his hat and jacket from the back of the chair.

"Well then," he says, smiling as if what you've just told him _isn't_ complete lunacy, "you came to the right place."

* * *

_**1944. Caen, Normandy – the one where they're soldiers of a different sort**_

Sam has always wanted to see the world. "The world", from the relative comfort and safety of his family's hayloft in Kansas, once seemed like a fantastic place, full of promise and adventure, exotic locales and foreign excitements. Sam tells his family _I want to see the world, don't want to stay in Kansas forever, come on._

His mother says _I'm sure you will someday, sweetheart, just be careful_, and his father, only half-seriously, tells him to join the army if he wants to see the world. Dean looks a little bit hurt and asks him what the hell he'd want to leave Kansas for anyhow, then tackles him to the floor of the barn and rubs dirt into his hair.

In the meantime, Sam settles for deciding that he's going to go to college – somewhere far away and new, California maybe, where he can catch a glimpse of the ocean, see the sun bleed into the water on the horizon at sunset.

His brother beats him to the whole "seeing the world" thing. Dean joins up and ships out in March of '42, two months after his twenty-first birthday and three after Pearl Harbor goes up in a whirl of smoke and fire. Sam's the one who goes with him to the train station in Kansas City, where Dean hugs him like it's the last time, tells him _I can't protect you here but I can protect you there_ and leaves without ever actually saying _goodbye._

Sam joins up the day after his eighteenth birthday in May of '43, thinking maybe he can get out and do some good at the same time – even though Dean writes him angry letters calling him a jackass, telling him to stay at home until he _has_ to go.

His illusions don't last. Before long Sam finds himself thinking that he'd give _anything_ for normal, for the dullness of life in Lawrence, the warm safety of his own bed, the comfortable silence between him and Dean as they watch the stars from the roof of the woodshed.

It's been over a year and Sam is in France, slogging through rain and mud and blood-spattered grass as the 4th Infantry moves further into Normandy. Sam doesn't want to see the world like this, gray and broken and bloody and wet, because there's people dead and dying all around him, he's lucky to eat once every 24 hours, and he has no idea if his brother is alive. He knows he was part of the assault, that Dean was with the 2nd Ranger Battalion, and that he was supposed to have advanced on Pointe du Hoc ahead of the rest of the landers – but it's been over a month since the landing, and no matter how much he asks around, he hasn't heard hide nor hair of Dean.

(Sam saw more bodies on that beach than he's ever seen in his entire life, than he ever will see again, and he can't – won't – will _not_ let himself think that one of them might be Dean's).

He and his unit slog into Caen on a gray, rainy morning, ready to join the camp there and wait for further orders when he thinks – he _thinks_ – that he sees something familiar out of the corner of his eye, something from old memories in the way that one of the soldiers by a tent in the distance shifts his weight from foot to foot.

Then the soldier turns just slightly and Sam draws in a rasping breath, feels like someone's just punched him in the chest.

Sam yells _Dean_ and the head he's looking at turns, his brother's face bruised and bloody but alive, shining through the silver sheet of rain as he smiles and starts to shout back.

* * *

_**1996. London, England – the one where they're wizards**_

England is cold and dark and always freaking raining and Dean's just about had enough of this shit. He and Sam have been sitting at the corner table of this weird British wizard pub for the last two hours and the creepy-ass little short dude that they're spying on is _still_ talking to his exceptionally greasy-looking, hook-nosed friend.

It's bad enough that they had to come all the way across the Atlantic to track the bastard who murdered Mom, who dragged their family into this stupid foreign war over two decades ago. Coming to England meant they had to Apparate, and Dean hates Apparating, especially this far – he's always liked traveling the regular way, by car mostly, no matter how much Sam makes fun of him for it. There's something very safe, very stable and grounding about driving the Impala, gripping the steering wheel and pressing the pedals down, feeling the crack of the aged leather seats and the roar of the engine when he accelerates. Apparating feels too much like flying does – don't even get him started on broomsticks, cause that shit just _can't_ be safe – like you're disconnecting from the world around you, floating, hovering in a space where there's nothing to grab on to, no anchor to speak of.

(He had to leave the Impala at Bobby's scrap yard in South Dakota, and he's still a little scared that despite all the wards he's put on it, he's gonna come back to find that Bobby's nifflers have made a nest in it, or torn off all the shiny metal bits they can get their paws on or something equally awful. Sam reminds him that it'd take a matter of minutes to fix the car but he snaps that it's the _principle_ of the thing, dammit, and besides the Impala ought to be fixed by hand anyhow).

Dean's been doing magic since he was four years old, but there's no way you could convince him to give up his car – or his guns, for that matter. It's not that he isn't good at magic – Dean may never have been to magic school or what the hell ever, but John Winchester taught his sons everything he knew, and the best hunter of Dark creatures in the continental United States knew a lot. He and Sam were setting corpses on fire with a word and a flick of the wrist when other kids their age could barely manage to float a feather. (Dean, as a matter of fact, shot his first gun at age six, cast his first Killing Curse at age nine, killed his first creature at age ten).

No, he can do magic with the best of them. He just likes the feel of solid things, of the Impala's steering wheel and the grip of his pistol – and hell, he's a practical man. Bullets generally work just as well as magic when there's something that needs killing.

Dark wizards and Dark creatures are (mostly) mortal, after all.

Greasy Hair Man has left by this point, but Creepy Short Dude (whom Dean has taken to calling Rat Face Guy in his head, or just Rat Bastard for short) is still sitting in his booth, taking pull after pull from his drink and scratching absently at his left forearm. When he finally gets up from his chair, Sam gives Dean a nudge and they slip out of the pub, tailing the small man as he weaves his way through streets and alleys.

Rat Bastard knows he's being followed, apparently, because he's halfway through a curse when they turn into the alley they've followed him to, face curled into a tangled snarl that makes him look even more like a rodent than before. Unfortunately for him, Sam is a much quicker draw – he's got the man Disarmed and pinned to the wall of the alley, wand against his throat, before he can finish the curse.

Dean, wand in his left hand and gun in his right, walks up to the man, who is currently whimpering in apparent fear and sniffling _what do you want, what do you want?_

He presses the barrel of the Colt to Peter Pettigrew's head, takes a deep breath and growls "You're going to tell us where the Dark Lord is."

* * *

_**2517. Haven, Outer Rim – the one where they're space cowboys**_

"So that was what? A _ghost?_"

"Yep. Honest-to-goodness, true-blue good gorram ghost. Oh, and you're welcome for the whole saving your life thing, you know, not like it was anyth–get _down!_"

"What was _that?_ And who in the hell are _you?_"

"That, my friend, was a ghost trying to decapitate you. And it's Dean. Charmed, lovely, it's been a pleasure meeting you, Captain Reynolds. Now please get _down_ and _stay_ down while my brother and I take care of this."


End file.
